Guns N’ Roses Accused Of Stealing ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – MARCH 12: Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses performs live on stage at Allphones Arena on March 12, 2013 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

Guns N’ Roses are being accused of stealing one of their biggest hits. The Australian music website Max TV (via Consequence of Sound) recently noticed that Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” sounds suspiciously similar to the song ‘Unpublished Critics” by Aussie band Australian Crawl, which was released six years earlier.

The publication points out that “Sweet Child O’ Mine’ has ‘the same chugging chord progression, a similarly-sweeping lead break, the verse melody, and the elongated one-syllable vocal in the chorus” as Australian Crawl’s song, which went to No. 1 in Australia.

[wp_ad_camp_4]Australian Crawl broke up in 1986, a year before Guns N’ Roses recently Appetite For Destruction, which featured the track in question, but as COS notes, both albums were released in the United States on Geffen.

Funnily enough, Australian Crawl’s singer James Reymar has acknowledged the similarities between the tracks before, but doesn’t seem interested in getting into court for this. So no, we probably won’t have a “Blurred Lines” level lawsuit anytime soon.

Instead Reymar seems to be leaning in to the whole thing, even playing “Sweet Child O’ Mine” live from time to time.

Although Sweet Child of Mine has way better lyrics, riffs, and energy, the similarities in chord progressions and musical intentions are undeniable. Sounds to me like GnR and Mike Clink took a mellow song and made a bigger and better version of it.

Similar but plagiarism, hardly. You’ll find many songs that are similar. That’s a result of similar chord progressions (only so many chords available to use), and the vocal melody that’s influenced by the music (chord progression).